Danger in Distance
by Twin-Lupus
Summary: I'd rather be missing you.


**Author's Notes: This is a very brief exploration of Edward and Winry. I'll have much happier fics with them eventually, but I wanted to get something out for 503 Day and wrote this first. I highly recommend you listen to the song "Even Though I'm a Woman" by Seeker Lover Keeper while reading (the title is not applicable but the lyrics are, and some of them are used here). Feel free to find me on tumblr (fabulousanima). Please let me know what you think.**

_**Picking up my bags from the station**_

_**Standing there face to face**_

_**I'd be lying is I did not say**_

_**I love you more when I'm missing you**_

_**It's why I am always away**_

_**Believe me it's true**_

She hoisted his son up higher on her hip. He waved a fat fist at his father's retreating form. As his father reached the train, he turned back to look at his wife and son. He held as tightly to his suitcase as she did to his child.

_It won't be for long, I promise._

_You always say that,_ she had sighed.

_I know. But it won't._

And she had smiled.

Now he stepped onto the train, disappearing into the cool interior as she stood on the platform in the sun. It felt as if she had just been on this very platform, bidding him goodbye and holding the infant. How long had he been home this time? Sometimes it felt as if his time spent at home got shorter and shorter. Well, he'd always had wanderlust in his blood. And he was needed elsewhere. It wouldn't be right for her to be too selfish.

She realized as the train began to puff away from the station that she had forgotten to tell him she was pregnant again.

_**I love the danger in distance**_

_**I'd rather be missing you**_

_**I love the danger in distance**_

_**I'd rather be missing you**_

_You can't keep doing this!_ she had shouted, forgetting to keep her voice down. Their reflections in the kitchen window glared at one another. The rest of the house was quiet and dark, but next to the stove it felt hot and oppressive under the glare of the single kitchen light.

_They need me!_

_We need you!_ She tried to keep her voice under control this time. _Why can't you understand that? Your children hardly know you! Why do you always disappear?_

He didn't answer, turning away to slam the refrigerator door shut. The bottles of milk rattled as it closed harshly. She looked at their reflections in the paned glass window.

Every time he came home, it was like they were newly married. He was tight hugs and sweet smiles and stolen kisses. The children wrestled him to the ground and he laughed out loud.

But the distance between the happy hellos and the gritted goodbyes was growing shorter. There was a look in their son's eyes that she could not quite place. Their daughter had more nightmares when her father was away. Her own heart broke each time he left, and she felt a thrill of excitement and nerves run through her veins whenever he rang to say he was returning home again.

_**Oh oh I  
I've got a secret  
I think I'm in love with missing you  
More than I'm in love with you  
That's why I go away all the time  
That's why I travel the world and roam free  
This time you're leaving me  
Oh this is how I feel**_

He was coming home again. He had been gone for almost nineteen months at this point. She replaced the phone in the cradle. There was no rush of heady excitement, no butterflies in her stomach. Instead she hollow and empty.

She could finally recognize the look in her son's eyes: it was the same one his father had worn for years after his own father had left. Her daughter slept through the night now; she no longer derived specific comfort in her father's warm hands tucking her beneath the covers.

She placed her forehead against the wood of the doorway, closing her eyes. There was nothing here for her anymore; her grandmother was long gone and the house held nothing but echoes. She knew the valley would take her, as it had when she was a girl looking to improve her trade. She knew her children would not protest. She knew her daughter would nod solemnly and her son would scowl with determination when she told them they were leaving home. Without their father.

She did not know if he would come find them. She realized it didn't matter.


End file.
